DUSTED with sand and stained with ­raindrops, some scribbled on ­tattered ration boxes, these are the moving thoughts of soldiers on the Afghan frontline.

War artist Derek Eland spent a month in Helmand province ­asking soldiers to record their feelings on his postcards.

Uncensored and anonymous, their comments range from the jokey and mundane – complaining about Army routine – to the ­shockingly emotional, talking about the horror of losing friends.

In one a medical officer recalls seeing a comrade blown up by a bomb. “His eyes told the whole story,” it reads. “As wide as possible and conveying such a sense of ­bewilderment, ­uncertainty and ­terror I shall never forget them.”

In another a soldier wrote: “We have two wars. One is shooting and fighting and the other war is what goes on in a soldier’s head when the fighting stops.”

Derek, a former Parachute Regiment officer, travelled to small patrol bases and checkpoints. He handed out cards and gave ­soldiers 20 minutes to fill them in, setting up a “diary room” where the ­messages would be posted.

He collected more than 400 cards, which form the basis of a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester.

Derek was struck by the power of the words from the first. “They weren’t saying, ‘get me out of here, this is hideous’, they were writing about the emotions of being there.

“I would photograph them writing and what struck me is that they wrote with the same intensity with which they fought.”

In the eight months since Derek returned, some of the 400 soldiers have gone on to be killed or injured. But it was decided to leave the cards anonymous.

“We haven’t ­identified them, we haven’t ­singled them out. The tragedy of it is there in the cards,” Derek says. “It’s all here on these little bits of paper.”

&#61592;In Our Own Words: Soldiers’ Thoughts From Afghanistan runs until June 24, 2012 at the Imperial War Museum North, Manchester